Do-It-Yourself Impeachments: Send Tuesday

Our next wave of Do-It-Yourself Impeachments are due. This time we're sending them to Republican Representative and Presidential Candidate Ron Paul. He's spoken in favor of impeachment. Here's a clip of his most recent comments about impeachment. While he shies away from calling for it directly, he does speak in favor of impeachment investigations.
If you're unfamiliar with the DIY Impeachment method, IfP has researched a method for impeaching the president using a little known and rarely used part of the Rules of the House of Representatives ("Jefferson’s Manual"). This document actually empowers individual citizens to initiate the impeachment process themselves.

"Jefferson's Manual" is an interpretive guide to parliamentary procedure, and is included (along with the Constitution) in the bound volumes of the Rules of the House of Representatives. It is ratified by each congress (including the current one), and has been updated continuously through the history of our democracy. The section covering impeachment lists the acceptable vehicles for bringing impeachment motions to the floor of the House.

Before the House Judiciary Committee can put together the Articles of Impeachment, someone must initiate the impeachment procedure. Most often, this occurs when members of the House pass a resolution. Another method outlined in the manual, however, is for individual citizens to submit a memorial for impeachment.

After learning this information, Minnesotan and Impeach for Peace member (Jodin Morey) found precedent in an 1826 memorial by Luke Edward Lawless which had been successful in initiating the impeachment of Federal Judge James H. Peck. Impeach for Peace then used this as a template for their "Do-It-Yourself Impeachment." Now any citizen can download the DIY Impeachment Memorial and submit it, making it possible for Americans to do what our representatives have been unwilling to do. The idea is for so many people to submit the Memorial that it cannot be ignored.

Go to the document at our website, fill in your relevant information in the blanks (Name/State), print it out, sign it, and send in your memorial on Tuesday the 20th. There's also extra credit for sending a DIY Impeachment to your own representative.

That's right — to make a big impact, we're having everyone send it in on the same date (Over 500,000 downloads so far representing over 1.6 million mailings). We hope to flood the congress with sacks of mail and cause a newsworthy event to further pressure them to act on the memorials. Although, it's important to keep in mind that in the 1830 precedent, impeachment resulted as a result of a single memorial. Yours might be the one.
Here's where to find the DIY Impeachment (Also en español.)

Our next wave, which we currently plan on delivering in July is going to be a little different. We're asking everyone to mail them to IfP. We'll then video tape one of our members hand delivering them to Washington. Stay tuned...